"Quite so. Who doesn't know dead people personally, and go to tea with them, and hear their bones rattle? And whose spirit doesn't meet in their thoughts, or works, the dead who are still living?"
"Most true, I'm sure; but you didn't come to tell me that?"
"No; yet it has set me wondering whether, perhaps, I am dead—at any rate deader than I need be."
"We are probably all deader than we need be."
"But to-day there has burst into my life a very wakening thing. It may have been sent. For mystery is everywhere, and what's looking exceedingly bad for those involved, may be good for me. And yet, one can hardly claim to win goodness out of the threatened misfortunes to those who are dear to one."
"What's the matter? Something's happened, or you wouldn't come to see me so early."
"Something has happened," he answered, "and one turns to you in times of stress, just as one used to turn to your dear brother, Henry. You have character, shrewdness and decision."
Miss Ironsyde saw light.
"You've come for Raymond," she said.
"Now how did you divine that? But, as a matter of fact, I've come for somebody else. A very serious thing has happened and if we older heads—"